


The Second Coming

by Fitzcarraldo



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Aged-Up Morty, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Smut, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-05 20:57:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12802242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fitzcarraldo/pseuds/Fitzcarraldo
Summary: Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.





	1. The ceremony of innocence is drowned

Rick and Morty’s private quarters shielded them from the sniffling, pitiful wails of the Mortys outside their complex. In comfortable solitude, they watched the TV flicker. They received the signal illegally and with some danger to themselves, since the cable box could potentially pinpoint their location. However, interdimensional cable was something they couldn’t live without. Without it, the silence was unbearable.

Morty nestled closer to Rick on the couch, his head resting in the crook of his arm. Rick tolerated it. He may have even liked it; his hand absently toyed with the fabric that covered Morty’s knee. Together they were a warm bundle in the cold house. Despite the TV softly playing some medical reality show, Morty could distinctly hear their synchronized breathing.

It was so damn peaceful. Morty’s uncovered eye drooped, and he fought the urge to fall asleep. He didn’t like falling asleep on the couch. It made him feel terribly vulnerable. But for some reason, when they huddled together, warmth intermingling, Rick’s thumb running circles on his leg, staying awake became impossible.

When he woke up, he lay in bed, still fully clothed. Rick, who was currently a shapeless lump next to him, must have carried him to their room last night.

Rick had his own room with his own bed. Why he insisted on sleeping next to him was a question Morty couldn’t answer. Not that he would complain. He was eternally too cold. When he pressed against the other man from behind, he felt equal parts disgust and a deep ache that hit his heart and his groin. It was the smell of axle grease mingled with the smell of Old Spice aftershave, the smell of alcohol and liver failure, death and decay and the tang of blood that never left either of them, that made his head spin.

Against his will, the blood from his brain rushed south. Breath hitching, he slipped his cold hands under the man’s sweater. His fingers ran up and down the bumps of his spine. He knew Rick was awake now. His breath was too schooled, too even, no longer relaxed from a drug-induced sleep. But he didn’t turn around, not yet, and Morty was thankful.

His hand wandered further forward, playing against his ribs. Rick let out an almost imperceptible sigh. His other hand snaked under him around to the other side. Morty’s arms were wrapped firmly around him and his back was flush against Morty’s front.

His left hand trailed through the man’s chest hair while the right hand ran its nails over his stomach. Emboldened by his receptiveness, he tweaked his nipple. He inhaled sharply. Then, finally, he turned around to face him. Morty thanked the gods that it was dark and he wouldn’t have to see his fucking face. But he could still feel the breath on his cheek, worming its way past his nostrils and becoming the breath that he breathed out. He loved and hated it, wanted more and wanted to run at the same time.

He found his bony hip and pulled him forward. Morty’s body and not his brain urged him to press their chapped lips together. Instinctively, with practiced ease, they fell into a rhythm. He gasped when those old, bony hands reached for the waistband of his pants so he could untuck his shirt. Those old, bony, deathly hands splayed across his too-hot skin, feeling with experience for the spots that would heat him up even more.

Morty could barely breathe, smothered as he was with self-hatred and lust, head buzzing every time their teeth clacked together. He hated Rick so much, he hated himself so much, and his hatred only spiked when he felt the hard outline of Rick’s cock against his leg, and the pit in his stomach grew and the lust clouded his brain more.

Rick pulled away, allowing him a brief moment to catch his breath. He left chaste kisses along his jaw until they found the spot on his neck where his pulse beat madly, and he sucked. Hard. Morty groaned, reaching for Rick’s hair and tugging, trying to lessen the overwhelming sensation. But Rick had different ideas. With one hand, he yanked Morty’s head to the side, exposing more of his neck to Rick’s teeth. With his free arm, he pulled Morty as close to him as possible. The only space between them was the space that separated atomic nuclei.

Reflexively, Morty’s leg wrapped around Rick, and he ground their hips together. Rick released him long enough to huff before attacking him with renewed ferocity. Shame burned Morty’s face when he realized that his hands had minds of their own; they roamed over the thin skin that stretched taut over bone and lean muscle, and to add to his misery, one of his hands mustered up the courage to experimentally squeeze the outline of Rick’s cock.

He growled, himself heady with lust. He grabbed Morty by the collar of his shirt and tore at the fabric until the buttons popped. He rolled them over so that Morty lay on his back and Rick had him pinned in place with his long limbs. Morty strained against the entrapment of Rick and his own clothes. The shame surged from his face into the farthest regions of his body as his instincts betrayed his consciousness. Every molecule rebelled and reformed under Rick’s expert touch.

When a hot mouth ghosted over his clothed erection, he sobbed. It was too much. Wasn’t he in control? Long, lazy fingers took their time unbuttoning his pants and working his cock free. The touch was magnificent, the maestro with his instrument, muscle memory from when Rick was still a human being and not an instrument himself.

Every stroke brought a new thought to the surface. His mind absurdly babbled; he was quickly losing his composure. The line between the college grad and the mad scientist blurred. Which one was he again? As his mind slipped, so too did the practiced hand of his beloved grandfather lose its calculated rhythm. He resorted to kitten licks to the head, something that didn’t require as much manual dexterity. Morty ate it up, letting his mind wander while the smartest man in the universe worshipped him.

Rick tired of playing the coquet, opting to take him to the root in one go. Whatever his past accomplishments, they paled in comparison to his ability to suck dick like a champ. Morty threw his head back and clamped a hand over his mouth. It was hard enough to be at another man’s mercy without having embarrassing sounds pass his lips. He wouldn’t. Not at the hands of a Rick.

He tumbled to a humiliating end far too fast. Nausea threatened to overtake him as he tensed up. He chased his orgasm just so the sickness would end. He relished the sound of Rick choking on his dick as he came in his mouth.

Morty shivered as the sweat cooled on his skin. Rick, like always, abandoned him in the afterglow, presumably to take care of himself alone. Morty thanked him for that.


	2. The worst are full of passionate intensity

Rick and Morty couldn’t resist. They both wanted ice cream. No one batted an eye at a scratched-up Rick with a half-blind Morty. To everyone else, they were just two aliens among many, browsing for the perfect flavor with the innocence of children.

They took their fast-melting ice cream cones outside so they could enjoy the reddish sky and spongy ground covering of the strange planet. They staked their claim over a bench and enjoyed the warmth of the twin suns.

Rick’s one arm held the dripping cone aloft and the other dangled over the arm of the bench, just barely brushing against a curled fern. Morty, cold even in the sunlight, pressed against Rick. He only felt truly warm when they made contact, but he never cared to admit that. Thinking about it too hard could only lead to cognitive dissonance.

Morty watched Rick licking at the trails of melted ice cream slithering down his hand with something akin to affection. Though he analyzed everything, he didn’t care to analyze this. He waved it away as another quirk of his biology, one that he had yet to conquer.

While he nursed his own ice cream, a wet blob plopped onto Morty’s lap. Rick looked smug for a half-second, a flicker of his old self, then he looked stricken at the loss of his dessert.

He patted his pockets, searching for an old handkerchief. Finding one, he tossed it to Morty, who cleaned up his mess, magnanimously silent.

***

They portaled home so Morty could change clothes, but not without some grumbling at Rick’s clumsiness. He never figured the man to have butter fingers. In fact, he had often admired the surety of his grip and his delicate handling of fine parts. Oh well. Old people couldn’t remain nimble forever.

He swung a blanket over his shoulders and sprawled out on the couch, his legs laid over Rick’s lap. Rarely did he ever bother with dressing down since he always worked, but after all that sugar, he decided to wear some sweats and doze off in front of the TV. The blanket, as well as Rick’s sure presence, made him feel less exposed.

Rick’s fingers had regained their certainty. They scratched up and down Morty’s calves, which relaxed him far more than a masseuse ever could. Only he could lull Morty so quickly, whether Morty liked it or not. It reminded him of when he still had a Rick with a mind of his own, when they would unwind after a harrowing adventure, physical contact calming their hearts and the surging of their blood.

The TV was not on at the moment. It was just their body heat and their quiet breathing illuminating a dimly lit room.

***

Morty woke up in bed with his ever-present shapeless lump keeping vigil next to him. The light from the blinds (an artificial lamp fitted to a window to simulate the sun) splayed across his prone form like a lover’s fingers. It made him beautiful, and Morty hated it.

Morty hated him so much, even as he joined his fingers with the fingers of light and felt the soft fabric of his eternal black sweater under his hand. He did all the laundry. He knew the loving care that went into keeping the fabric from stretching, fading, and fraying.

Did he love this thing? He wondered this when he bent forward to kiss his temple and smooth away some stray white hairs. Those yellowed eyes shot open, the instinct of a fugitive who felt danger bending over him. But his eyelids relaxed when he realized it was just Morty.

_The brain could not survive without the wires that connected it to Morty._ Rick turned around and he could not read his expression. Were there thoughts that weren’t Morty’s that still flickered to life behind those blue eyes?

_To think was to execute a command to the programming inside Rick’s head. The hub lay in the brain stem, the seat of consciousness, from which Morty could control Rick’s every action._ He fell into the other man’s arms, the sinewy muscles constricting him like snakes. He was safe. Instinctively, they sought each other’s mouths.

_Every nerve and every thought of Morty’s were mapped to Rick’s body. Morty was the locus of control for the automaton who no longer held the gift of consciousness._ It was a chaste meeting of minds, at first, but like a light switch flipping on, Morty wanted more. He always wanted more. Rick’s sweater didn’t put up a fight against Morty’s searching hands. He caressed the soft flesh of his creation, feeling along the ridges of his ribs and marveling at the hard, compact muscle.

_Prometheus had breathed life into Rick’s dead body, building him back up into Morty’s magnum opus. Morty had played God, and he had won._ Rick tolerated the barrage of kisses that Morty laid across Rick’s face and neck. He was programmed to tolerate it, and his biology told him to react to it. Morty nuzzled against the hard pulse near his jaw. He relished the noise that he drew out when he sucked on it.

_Rick’s automatic processes were left intact, allowing Morty to exert his influence on Rick’s voluntary actions. Rick was an extension of himself. Like lifting up his arm, directing him was effortless._ Rick gave it back and more. The muscle memory that Morty had left him allowed him to find all the right spots to drive Morty crazy. The maestro picked up the violin and drew the bow across the strings, and Morty’s harsh pants filled the quiet bedroom.

_Morty had tested the body mapping extensively, long days in the laboratory with his brain-dead grandfather for company._ Rick’s mouth found one of his nipples, and Morty bucked his hips reflexively. He applied just the right amount of suction for Morty’s flush to cascade down to his shoulders. He moved to the other one, and Morty was already a mess.

_Next, he had worked on the most extensive, complex computer project he had ever undertaken, the one that would give his grandfather back some autonomy, as well as some personality._ Rick lavished him with attention, but he studiously avoided dipping past the waistband of Morty’s sweats, keying him up until his hands flew down to uncover himself. But Rick had other ideas. He grabbed him by the wrists and flung his hands away to replace them with his own.

_He had spent many hours in the lab verbally sparring with him in order to gauge the effectiveness of his computer program. It was surprisingly easy. He realized that he had only to reconstruct Rick from his broken parts rather than rebuild him entirely._ Suddenly, he grew coy and played with the elastic rather than free him immediately. Morty huffed with impatience. He ached for some attention.

_He was indistinguishable from a living Rick._ He knew Morty’s weaknesses, and he breathed hot air over his clothed erection, refusing him any more than that. It always drove Morty to insanity. He heard himself as if from afar begging Rick to suck him off, to do anything, just to touch him already.

And he did. And Morty covered his face in shame.


	3. Surely some revelation is at hand

Morty didn’t know when he stopped thinking of Rick as a machine and when he started thinking of him as a human being.

It happened slowly, but it began happening alarmingly soon after Rick’s final tune-up and his official debut as Evil Rick, as the Council affectionately dubbed him.

It was contained in the little things, he thought, little flickers of Rick’s former self that emerged during mundane activities, always unexpected.

It was the upward curl of his lip when he thought something Morty said was particularly amusing or when he finally executed a rogue Rick that squirmed under his boot.

It was the look of pain and indignation when, in a fit of fury, Morty had swiped at his face with a knife and left the gnarly scar that crooked down the right side of his lip like a lightning bolt. The way he had held his hand to his face and the brief emotion of betrayal that shone from his eyes alone. And then the anger at Morty’s impudence. Morty’s stomach had done a horrific flip at the sight, the appearance of something so human in a man that was not supposed to be human anymore. He deserved the matching scar on his back from Rick’s retaliation.

It was the act of carrying him to bed and then taking his position next to him at night, when Morty couldn’t possibly have conscious control of Rick’s movements. Sometimes he wondered if all of Rick’s actions were the result of Morty and his lines of code. Everything could be distilled into a few formulae; Morty believed that with certainty. It simply took the right mind to simplify them.

But when he woke up from the fingers of artificial light in his bedroom, the way they caressed Rick as he slept fitfully, Morty wondered. And his breath puffed out as cold as liquid nitrogen.

***

Morty loved Rick as God once loved his creation. But did God’s creation love him back? Could a human ever look at the face of God himself and not hate what he saw? Could he resist shaking his fist at the inhumanity of allowing him to suffer while God watched?

Morty didn’t know. Morty didn’t want to know.

He only knew that the only Rick he had ever loved was probably dead, replaced with wires and one single program that he had titled “I love my grandkids.”

He wanted so badly for it to be real, but he shook at the thought that it wasn’t.

Right now he curled into himself in the dark bedroom. The artificial light was off to stimulate the production of melatonin in the human body. Rick was downstairs. He knew what Rick was doing at any given time; right now he was washing dishes. The program, which so perfectly simulated Rick’s insults, also bade him tell Morty to go to bed, since he clearly didn’t feel well. He had even mimicked a look of grandfatherly concern. Morty swelled with pride at his work, assuming that that look was indeed his doing. He couldn’t be sure anymore.

No, he didn’t feel well at all. His whole body rebelled against the idea that he loved Rick and hated himself and not the other way around. It rebelled against the idea that Rick was alive in any sense beyond the biological. It couldn’t be. Was he still in there? And would he, if his programming allowed, reassert control over his body?

Maybe he had not subjugated the smartest man in the universe. Maybe he had only caged him.

If he thought his Rick was dead, then he was alive, and if he thought he was safe, then he was coming for him.

***

Morty shook uncontrollably. Along with his ever-present chill, he now shook with something worse: fear. His heavy fingers fumbled with the device in his hands. By creating the device, he conceded that Rick had a shred of consciousness, and with that single shred came the possibility that Rick would strike him when he let his guard down.

It was a simple thing, really. It was a fingerprint lock that he planned to fit over the utensil drawer in the kitchen, so only Morty could access it. This meant that he would have to cook and wash dishes without Rick’s help, but it made him feel more secure.

Only when he had installed the lock did he relax. But his solace in this forsaken lab was also his biggest threat. Maybe he could still cuddle on the couch, he thought, if he kept his eye open.

So he did, or at least he tried to.

If he weren’t so damn cold all the time, and if it didn’t cost so much to turn the heat up, and if he could stand to wear extra layers perhaps, then he wouldn’t be securely tucked under the arm of his sworn enemy. And to top it off, he could not stay up. His head lolled and he snapped awake. He wasn’t going to do it. He was not going to sleep with this man anywhere close to him.

***

He woke up an unknown amount of time later with this man very close to him. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before Rick murdered him in his sleep.

On the other hand, he had had so many chances before. What made now so different?

Nothing had changed except Morty himself.

Rick was awake. Morty shivered, but not from the cold. Rick scooted closer to him, and Morty sighed from the warmth, but the shivering didn’t stop.

Rick noticed and pulled him into an embrace until they were tightly wound together like the bundle of wires at the base of Rick’s skull. Morty was sinking into the black fabric of his long-sleeved shirt, a black ocean with long arms. Morty was colder than the server room in the underground lab. Rick’s mechanical heart ticked in time to Morty’s own pulse.

“Rick?”

He only hummed, pressing his nose into Morty’s fluffy hair. Morty jolted.

“Hmm?” Somehow he wound his arms around him even tighter.

Rick’s neural net must have associated physical contact with Morty’s continued happiness. Morty had played himself; at any moment Rick could break free and realize he did not have to listen to his programming. And it would be the end.

But maybe, maybe he could take advantage of this, before it was too late.

“Hey, Rick.” He moved his hand along the curve of his jaw, feeling the hint of gray stubble. Leaning in toward his ear, he merely breathed. A shudder went through the other man. 

“Take me.”

That did it. Rick moved with the litheness of a predator. He had them flipped over; Rick’s body blocked the artificial light, eclipsing it with the unnatural glow of his eyes and a rare but dangerous grin. Morty’s whole body resonated in time to the fast-paced drum of his heart.

Like a predator, he went for the throat, licking and biting ferociously. One of the only things his mouth was good for, Morty thought. Morty ran his hands through Rick’s hair, mussing it up even more. He tried to focus on the pure sensation rather than the inevitable dysphoria from the fact that he was using a brain-dead man as a masturbation aid.

Either way, he heated up fast. Rick had his thin body pressed flush against Morty’s, jutting bones and all. The cold in his body disappeared wherever Rick touched. Even if Rick, somewhere inside, hated it, Morty fucking loved it. He thought in that moment that he’d never give it up, danger be damned.

He couldn’t take anymore; these fucking clothes were strangling them both. He pushed Rick off of him roughly and practically ripped the black shirt to shreds in his effort to remove it. Rick seemed to appreciate the unusual enthusiasm on Morty’s part.

Now Rick leaned back as Morty unbuttoned his pants. Morty, in some removed part of his brain, knew that this went against everything he believed in, but when he had Rick unclothed, he salivated anyway.

He was so fucking beautiful. Morty traced the outline of the scars that snaked over his body. Some of them were from Morty, and all of them were his. He ran his tongue across the thick mark that slashed across his navel and loved the way he tensed and shifted under him. Morty couldn’t remember a time when he had reciprocated; the shame always stopped him, and Rick never pressed him, wasn’t programmed to press him.

But now Morty took in the sight of him, and he loved him. His eyes shone with defiance, but the flush already burning his face and the angry red of his cock spoke for him. Morty wanted to feel all of him. He struggled out of his clothes and descended on Rick; the feeling of so much skin on skin fogged his head, so he turned it off. He didn’t need to think right now.

At this point, this was already much farther than Morty usually took it. And he couldn’t remember a time when he, completely bare, sat over Rick’s naked dick. Oh fuck, he almost felt bashful, like he wouldn’t meet his expectations. Did he still have expectations?

At the moment, Rick eyed him with something akin to open-mouthed wonder. Without breaking eye contact, he dug his hands into Morty’s hips and rutted against him, breath already growing ragged.

Fuck, he had never seen Rick look so _needy_. Fuck, it went straight to his dick. He repositioned so their dicks were pressed together. Good God, he was so hot, he could feel him throb. His hand barely fit around the two of them, but it was enough for them to start moving.

Morty was leaking like a faucet, which helped. They ground against each other, fast and uncoordinated, as if this was their last time together. They breathed sharp and ragged. It was too much, it was too much. He broke it off, and Rick protested. Morty moved toward the front of the bed, reaching for the nightstand. From the drawer, he pulled out a bottle.

“Please. I want you inside me.” He cringed at how small and pathetic he sounded, but the small, choked noise Rick made was worth the momentary spike of embarrassment. “Will you. . . ?”

Long, shaky fingers took the bottle from him. Morty lay on his back beside Rick as he coated his fingers. He shivered. Was he really doing this? He swung his arm over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch while Rick rubbed teasing circles around his entrance. Morty felt terribly open, like a book with its pages fanned out, pages turning as the breeze hit it.

He’d experimented with insertion before, but only fingers. And Rick’s fingers were much longer, and they burned as they stretched him out.

“More.”

Rick added a second. They hurt a little, but then he crooked his fingers and found _that spot_ , the one he could never quite reach with his short fingers.

Morty moaned; he’d never felt anything like it. Completely devoid of reservations by now, he begged for more. Another finger, and for him to do that again.

He let go of his shame; he moaned wantonly. It galvanized him, every time Rick brushed it.

He was reduced to a whimpering mess. He swatted at Rick’s wrist. Out, out. More.

Something slick and hot and insistent and far larger than fingers pressed against him.

“Yes, yes, please, Rick, c’mon, hurry up.”

He gasped at the first inch. It was so _big_. How was this going to fit? He felt Rick shaking slightly, barely keeping himself under control.

“It’s okay, I’m--.” He groaned. Rick was dragging this out, agonizingly slow, and he finally used his legs to shove him forward. He sank into the hilt, and Morty shut his eyes at the pain radiating in his lower body.

“Move, Rick.”

And he did.

“Ohhh fuck yes. . . .” Morty began stroking his cock, but Rick slapped his hand away, only to replace it with his own. Somehow, his hand felt so much better than his, as if he knew Morty better than he knew himself. Who was the master here? Morty had lost his mind, every thrust knocking a revelation out of his head, every twist of Rick’s hand knocking it far out of reach. Something was different.

Rick was merciless; he had bent Morty nearly in half, and he set a furious pace, as if he was taking out all of his pent-up frustration on Morty. Maybe he was. Maybe he’d saved up all those times Morty left him hanging, maybe he was channeling it all right now, attempting to break him with his aggression.

He angled himself just right and hit his prostate. Again and again. He felt Rick grin against the crook of his neck, and it only grew wider every time he drew out a new noise from Morty.

“Fuck yes, Rick, choke me!”

He obliged; long, bony fingers latched around his neck like a collar. All the while he still kept his other hand on Morty’s cock and somehow he maintained some sort of rhythm. Jesus Christ, it was too much, too much, too--.

Morty wanted Rick to let go; spots swam in his vision, and all sensation, all visual and auditory information, condensed into a single white-hot point. He couldn’t breathe. He reached for the hand and tried to wiggle past the iron grip, to no avail. He wished he’d decided on a safe word or something.

He could force Rick to let go.

Let go. Let go. Let go. But he didn’t. Maybe his transmitter quite working. Oh no. No no no no no.

He had to force it.

OVERRIDE.

OVERRIDE.

OVERRIDE.

But his grip only seemed to tighten. Along with his grip, Morty felt the coil in his gut tighten. Oh God, he barely stayed afloat, almost unconscious, and oh fuck, _oh fuck, fuck_ , his hips twitched and _oh God_ , he was cumming, harder than he ever had in his life. One spurt hit his chin and the rest splattered across his chest and stomach.

Only when he was done riding out his orgasm did Rick finally let go. Morty’s hands flew to his own throat, palpating the tender, bruised flesh while gulping air in huge bursts.

Rick wasn’t done. He focused purely on finishing himself, and it didn’t take long until his rhythm became more erratic. Soon after, he thrust deep and released inside Morty with a drawn-out groan.

He pulled out and made as if to leave. Morty sat up.

“Rick, wait.” His voice sounded hoarse; it was shot. “Please.” He transmitted the directive to stay with him. He really needed it.

But Rick did not. Morty watched him leave; he didn’t even bother picking up his clothes, which still laid scattered across the bed.

Morty’s head and throat hurt, and he surveyed with a bleary eye the mess of clothes and bedsheets that he sat amongst. He curled in on himself, cum still on him and in him. He didn’t care about the sheets, but he wished Rick had stayed. Even if he was just an extension of Morty.

Tears sprang up against his will, and he hated the hurtful lump in his throat that accompanied them. It suddenly felt very cold in the room.

***

Morty was alone, and he found his hands wrapping around the dark prints on his neck. His throat felt very tender, and a slight press brought back the sense of overwhelming powerlessness that he had had such a hard time adjusting to.

Something was wrong with his transmitter. He was no longer in control, trapped in the labyrinth with the Minotaur. But he had one advantage over the uncaged beast.

At the moment, he knew where Rick was and what he was currently doing: reading a book in his room. Harmless enough. Morty resisted the urge to visit him. He was no longer his.

Sliding on a jacket as he walked, he made his way to the lab. The computer set-up down here allowed Morty to track Rick’s whereabouts between dimensions, pinpointing his location in any quadrant of the universe.

The dot on the security camera feed confirmed that Rick was indeed in his room.

It was with regret that Morty remotely deactivated Rick. A momentary crackle of static like the crunch of an aluminum can in his head indicated that his connection to Rick had been severed.

Even with the jacket, Morty was cold, and he was more alone than ever. He headed upstairs to bring Rick’s body down to the lab.


	4. A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

Morty deactivated Rick at night; they no longer slept together. The chill wound through his bones and stiffened his fingers to uselessness. Many nights, his fingers fumbled on the keyboard, sluggishly tapping keys since his hands had lost their fine motor control from his bad circulation.

Watching Rick’s facial muscles slacken, his nervous system shutting down as the machine sent his body into stasis, sent icicles up Morty’s spine. He ran a thumb over the lifeless, rapidly cooling skin. No response.

While he was connected thus and had no bodily autonomy, Morty tested his transmitter and Rick’s receiver. Night after night, his tests came back normal. Nothing appeared to be wrong.

Putting him into a forced coma every night was hard, but waking him up every morning was even worse.

There was the gasp for air as if he had been submerged underwater. There were the roving eyes that rolled around, frantically trying to regain a sense of self and a sense of place.

Then the eyes would alight on Morty. And he thought he saw, only for an unguarded moment, a look of pure hatred, the seething rage of a trapped wolf before a tranquilizer subdued it.

Then and only then did Rick’s face resume its carefully neutral expression, awaiting orders.

The one order that Morty always gave was verbal: “Run program ‘I love my grandkids.’” And Rick would patiently wait for Morty to tenderly unhook the wires. And Rick would rise slowly, with cracking joints, and pull Morty into a hug.

Morty took pride in the authenticity of his program. The closeness of the embrace, the way Rick pressed his nose into his hair, the low hum of contentment he would sometimes give. It felt so warm and _genuine_ ; it fooled Morty. He let it fool him. He was Morty fucking Smith, boy genius, and he had built a machine so convincing that it had lulled him into a false sense of security.

It became harder and harder to take. When Rick was unconscious, Morty was dead; when he woke up, Morty came back to life. The cycle tore him apart, the constant reminder that Rick wasn’t real, only an amalgamation of biological and mechanical spare parts.

He cried into the fabric of Rick’s shirt one day. With a soaked eye patch and a freely running eye, he stared into a gaze as blank and as pitiless as the sun.

“Rick?” He choked on the name. “Don’t--don’t you remember me? I’m still your grandson.” He sobbed. When he spoke again, Rick’s eyes had softened.

“You’re very dear to me, Morty.” Bending slightly at the knees so that they stood at eye level, he whispered, “If you love me, you’d let me go.”

Between gasps for air, all he could manage was a wavering, drawn-out “No.” He pounded his fists feebly against the wall of Rick’s chest, and he fucking cried.

“Don’t go.”

Rick took his fists in each of his large hands and held them close to his heart. And he shook his head at the silent plea in the lines of Morty’s face.

He released his fists, and Morty backed up to erect a barrier between Rick and the weapons that lined the shelf behind him.

Rick’s hand scratched at the base of his head as if in thought.

It happened too quickly for Morty to prevent it.

He had pulled a knife, flicked it open, and drove it through his neck before Morty could stop him. He fell to the ground, and blood flowed.

Normally, it was not a fatal wound, but he had struck the receiver at the base of his skull, which he could no longer live without. 

Morty sank to his knees, the crunch of a severed connection reverberating in his head for the last time. Half of Morty had winked out like the display of an old television.

He set to work disposing of the body in the on-site incinerator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
